The Obesity Crisis and the Field of Kinesiology: A Discursive and Memetic Consideration

Abstract

The obesity crisis has been taken up as a major issue that both orients and galvanizes the field of kinesiology. This article considers that the act of naming something as a crisis is not simply a benign public reaction to an issue or phenomenon of serious concern. Crisis discourse can be used as a tool for shaping/influencing particular agenda. It can have a political intent. Whatever its multi-factorial causes, once named as a crisis the idea of an obesity crisis has certainly “caught on.” But why has it caught on? In order to investigate this question, this article employed the concept of a meme as an analytic tool. A meme, a term first coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene (1976), is the cultural equivalent of a gene and is claimed to be the unit of cultural transmission. Memes are selected in a process not unlike biological selection. Some memes thrive and others die off or become unused. In considering the obesity crisis to be a meme, to know why it has been so successful in reproducing itself and why now is needed This article offers a speculative discursive and memetic discussion of the obesity crisis and its receptivity in kinesiology at this point in time.

Keywords:

• Obesity
• memes
• crisis
• discourse
• kinesiology

Notes

1. Exergaming refers to video games that are used as a form of exercise.